Recognizing some of the bravest men who ever fought

Three men, three medals, one village.

Three recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, gathered in the Village of Altamont on Sunday for a ceremony honoring the oldest among them: Lt. John Finn, of California, who turns 100 in July.

Finn received the award in 1942 in recognition of his efforts during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the year earlier. Finn, severely wounded, manned a 50-caliber machine gun amid heavy strafing fire -- leaving his post only when ordered to seek medical attention.

"They hit every damn thing there," said Finn, who was a Chief Petty Officer with 15 years of naval experience at the time of the attack. "Just bam -- like that -- we've got a war on our hands."

Three years later, M/Sgt. Nicholas Oresko leapt out of a snowy trench at the Battle of the Bulge only to realize the men in his platoon were not following him. Undaunted but terrified, Oresko single-handedly attacked a pair of German machine guns at the top of a hill.

"I looked up at the sky and said, 'Lord, I know I am going to die. I just ask that you make it fast,'" said Oresko, now 92.

Oresko knocked-out one gun before he was knocked-out with a severe hip wound. The New Jersey native thought he would rest, until he realized he had been thrown under the second gun and out of the enemy's sight. He scrambled for a grenade, pulled the pin, waited the longest four seconds of his life then tossed it over the top. The former softball pitcher was on the mark.

"I saw that they were dead," Oresko said of half the gun's crew, "so I just pulled the trigger a couple of times on my M1 and killed the others."

Oresko said he has thought, every day for the last six decades, about how he killed those men. But, he said, it was "kill or be killed."

The third of the Medal of Honor recipient in Altamont Sunday was one of New York's own. Francis Currey, 83, of Selkirk, fired a single bazooka shot to disable a German tank during a battle in Malmedy, Belgium in 1944. He then killed three enemy soldiers with his rifle before freeing five American troops who had been pinned down for hours.

"Being that it's a small town like Altamont, I think they're doing a terrific job," Currey said of the ceremony. "The turnout here is fabulous. It really is."

The ceremony was organized by Jack and Cindy Pollard, who own the Home Front Café on Main Street. Their three distinguished guests are among only 97 living Medal of Honor recipients, 23 of who served in World War II.

Since its authorization in 1861, the Medal of Honor has been awarded to only 3,447 soldiers.

CBS 6 also talked to a fourth World War II veteran, William Langston of Latham, who was at the lowest point in doomed USS West Virginia when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor began. He recalled how about 20 soldiers formed a human chain to pull him and other soldiers up through an open cargo hatch.

"You stuck your hands up, and they just grabbed you and pitched you out on the deck with these guys holding you in place," Langston said. "Then they said, 'You're on your own now.'"

Langston swam to a nearby island, where he belted ammunition for a machine gun for the next several hours. In a strange, and life-saving twist, he had just begun mess cook duty the previous day. That meant his general quarters station was located in the central motor room, instead of the forward engine room.

No one who was in that room survived.